However, while daydreaming about the future, I wonder whether Debian
will beat the clock? I have read that the end of operating systems is
nigh.
Chip manufacturers are working to produce chips that emulate a standard
architecture - so that an operating system would be unnecessary.

I am not knowledgeable enough to evaluate ideas like that, but, if
anyone is interested, I would certainly value your opinions.
--
Chris

10-06-2007, 12:39 PM

unix

Re: Race against time?

"Chris" <nospam@[127.0.0.1]> wrote in message
news:NUcnzcCeVcaDFwGM@[127.0.0.1]...[color=blue]
> I'm starting to feel my way into Debian Sarge and am finding it both
> difficult and interesting. I bought two books which helped:
>
> "Debian GNU/Linux 3.X Bible"
> David B. Harris; Paperback; £17.49
>
> "The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques"
> Maurice Krafft; Paperback; £21.68
>
> However, while daydreaming about the future, I wonder whether Debian will
> beat the clock? I have read that the end of operating systems is nigh.
> Chip manufacturers are working to produce chips that emulate a standard
> architecture - so that an operating system would be unnecessary.
>
> I am not knowledgeable enough to evaluate ideas like that, but, if anyone
> is interested, I would certainly value your opinions.
> --
> Chris[/color]

Well, currently we already now see many small device coming out with some
type of intelligence, some kind of small operating system inside.

The Linux kernel f.ex. is small and can easily be configured to do a small
job, and burned on a small EPROM making f.ex. your advanced coffee machine
making the right coffeee.

The problem is that a chip can only do what it has been programmed to do.
As long new hardware devices are coming out every month, we need to be able
to make changes to the operating system without changing chip.
So I think operating systems still have a long life, all depending on for
what use.

Brgds
Torben

10-06-2007, 12:39 PM

unix

Re: Race against time?

On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:07:58 +0000, Chris wrote:
[color=blue]
> I'm starting to feel my way into Debian Sarge and am finding it both
> difficult and interesting. I bought two books which helped:
>
> "Debian GNU/Linux 3.X Bible"
> David B. Harris; Paperback; Â£17.49
>
> "The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques"
> Maurice Krafft; Paperback; Â£21.68
>
> However, while daydreaming about the future, I wonder whether Debian
> will beat the clock? I have read that the end of operating systems is
> nigh.
> Chip manufacturers are working to produce chips that emulate a standard
> architecture - so that an operating system would be unnecessary.
>
> I am not knowledgeable enough to evaluate ideas like that, but, if
> anyone is interested, I would certainly value your opinions.[/color]

IMHO - that ain't gonna happen. Ever hear of a Commodore 64?

10-06-2007, 12:39 PM

unix

Re: Race against time?

Chris wrote:
[color=blue]
> I'm starting to feel my way into Debian Sarge and am finding it both
> difficult and interesting. I bought two books which helped:
>
> "Debian GNU/Linux 3.X Bible"
> David B. Harris; Paperback; £17.49
>
> "The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques"
> Maurice Krafft; Paperback; £21.68
>
> However, while daydreaming about the future, I wonder whether Debian
> will beat the clock? I have read that the end of operating systems is
> nigh.
> Chip manufacturers are working to produce chips that emulate a standard
> architecture - so that an operating system would be unnecessary.
>
> I am not knowledgeable enough to evaluate ideas like that, but, if
> anyone is interested, I would certainly value your opinions.[/color]

I guess we'll see.

In the years past they have tried to put more and more of the OS required
instructions into the hardware. The Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) VAX grew
up in that arena. The problem seemed to be the more they added to the
hardware to support the advanced instruction sets, which did make
programming easier, the harder it was to get the throughput up. The VAX
was said to be a Very Large Instruction Set Computer (VLISC). Then Reduced
Instruction Set Computer (RISC) proved that decreasing the hardware
complexity was a big enough gain in speed to warrant using more
instructions to accomplish the task. So then DEC went from the 32-bit VAX
computers to the 64-bit Alpha computers. Running the same OpenVMS OS Alpha
System's kicked butt in comparison.

To kinda of compare, if you have ever looked at the cpu instruction set such
as Intel's 386 (and up) it would be like looking at a four function
calculator. It does the basic +, -, / and X. Looking at the VAX the
instructions included things such as polynomial, insert into queue, remove
from queue, etc. I took a formal one week course to learn the VAX
instruction set and it was some intense learning. I took a formal class on
a different mid-range computer that only had 13 instructions, which only
took one day, but to get any work done took lots of programming. The Alpha
has more than 13 but less than Intel supports in a Pentium CPU.

Anyway my last meeting with Microsoft over licensing they almost acted
shocked that I would ever buy a PC without their OS on it. While it is
true that most of my PC's at work are running Microsoft Windows, but the
only stable PC's are running Linux or SCO Unix. Still the best systems we
have are the Alpha's running OpenVMS.